by Terri Osburn
Silence fell between us until he said, “At least he didn’t get drunk.”
Was he trying to make me feel better?
“That doesn’t feel like a perk in this situation.” I pulled my phone from the purse on my hip. “I guess I’ll head home.”
Jacob looked at his watch. “I’ll take you. My shift ends in five minutes anyway.”
I peeked over the phone. “I can order a car. It’s fine.”
“I’m already here.”
“You’re here as a bouncer, right? I assume that means you aren’t on driving duty.”
He ran a hand through his thick black hair—an insanely sexy move—before offering a broad-shouldered shrug. “The offer stands.”
I’d already taken one free ride from this man. Taking two made me feel like a moocher. “Let me see how much cash I have on me.” Searching through my purse, I found a ten, three ones, and three quarters. “I’m just shy of fourteen dollars. If there’s an ATM close by, I can get more.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“I have to give you something.” The words came out harsher than intended. Taking a breath, I said, “I’m sorry. I’m having a really crappy week. Will you at least accept the money that I have on me? It would make me feel better about taking the ride.”
Full lips tilted up in a boyish grin, showing off a heart-stopping set of dimples.
“Not a problem,” he said. While I was still breathless from the dimples, he added, “Wait here while I go clock out.”
Head empty, I could do little more than nod as he went back inside. Grateful for the chance to pull myself together, I sat down on a nearby bench and closed my eyes, wondering what the odds were that the same guy could come to my rescue two dates in a row. Whatever the chances, I was relieved for the one positive the universe had tossed my way. That scene inside could have been so much worse.
“I saw you looking at him,” growled a mildly familiar voice.
I opened my eyes to find the blond woman and her date exit the restaurant.
“He smiled and I smiled back,” she defended, her spiked heels clicking on the concrete as she sashayed by me. “You’re so damn jealous. That’s the third guy you’ve attacked this week.”
“They keep lookin’ at you. I don’t like it.”
They were too far away for me to hear her reply, but I hoped it was something to the tune of we should see other people. Permanently.
“Here you go,” Jacob said, drawing my attention from the retreating couple. He held out a small white towel. “I thought you might need this.”
My hand went straight to my hair. “I forgot about the drinks.” A clump of hair was stuck to my temple so the dry towel wouldn’t do much, but I still appreciated the thought. “Thank you.”
“You can leave it in my car, and I’ll bring it back my next shift.” Nodding in the direction the arguing couple had gone, he said, “My car is this way.”
“Oh, right.” We made our way down the sidewalk toward Heinz Field, taking a right at the end of the block. “Thanks again for doing this. My address is two hundred—”
“Cowan Street,” he finished for me. “I know.”
“You remember?”
“It’s been forty-eight hours. Of course, I remember. How’s your head?”
I tried prying a clump of hair apart. “Sticky right now.”
“I meant the bump from the other night.”
Touching the small bruise I’d managed to cover with my bangs that morning, I said, “Much better. I put ice on it like you suggested and that helped take the swelling down.”
“Smart.” He pointed to the right as we approached a large parking area. “The car is in lot two. Can I ask you a question?”
That was a question, but I’d have been a smart-ass for saying so. “Go ahead.”
“What’s with the blind dates?”
I was tempted to say How much time do you have? Instead, I gave the reason I assumed most people would have in this situation.
“Looking for love, right? Isn’t that the reason anyone goes on a blind date?” This was not my reason, of course.
“I’m not asking just anyone. I’m asking you. You’re attractive. A little clumsy but seemingly a good person. Why can’t you find your own dates?”
How to answer that? I could, I had to assume, find a date if I really wanted to. I simply didn’t want to. But saying as much would lead to more questions that I didn’t want to answer.
“I’m busy,” I said, hoping that would satisfy his curiosity. “Why not delegate where you can?”
He pressed a button on his key fob and the lights of a white Buick flashed, accompanied by the sound of unlocking doors. “You keep answering my questions with a question.”
Stepping around to the passenger door, I said, “Maybe that’s your clue to stop asking questions.”
I had to give him credit. He took my borderline-rude response in stride. “Message received.”
We buckled up in silence and as he drove through the North Shore streets, I watched the world go by out his passenger window for the second time that week. Being with a stranger shouldn’t feel quite so comfortable, but exhaustion and hunger kept me from analyzing the situation too deeply. I’d found a good Samaritan. Twice. A strange coincidence but a coincidence nonetheless. One I greatly appreciated since all I wanted to do was go home, grab whatever I could scrounge up in my fridge, and crawl into bed.
“You’re a driver and a bouncer then?” I asked once the silence stretched a little too far. We were crossing the West End Bridge so I made it at least seven minutes without talking. That’s a long time for me.
“You get to ask questions?” he said, cutting me a friendly glare.
A fair response. “Yes, I do. How many other jobs do you have?”
Jacob brought the car to a stop at the light at end of the bridge. “One more.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I said, “And that is?”
“What do you do?” came the response.
A worthy opponent, indeed. If he wasn’t telling, neither was I.
“Well played,” I muttered. “You said earlier that I’m a seemingly nice person. Based on what?”
I truly had no idea how a stranger I’d spent less than an hour with could come to such a conclusion.
We rolled into motion again as he replied, “You went the extra mile to get your drunk date home the other night, and you defended me a little while ago. I guess it’s possible that you might kick puppies when no one is looking, but based on our two encounters, the good person thing seemed like a safe guess.”
An accurate assessment, which revealed a keen sense of observation and a willingness to see the good in people. Even clumsy strangers whose friends had terrible taste in blind dates.
“I do not, in fact, kick puppies when no one is looking. Or when they are looking, for that matter.” Feeling as if I should return the compliment, I added, “And you seem like a good person, too. Considering you’ve saved me twice now. Do you find that as odd as I do?”
“That I’m a good person?”
“No, that we’ve run into each other twice like this.” The odds had to be against us. “I mean, this is a relatively large city. What are the odds of two strangers crossing paths like this over just a few days?”
He kept his eyes on the road and eased the car left after the light. “Both run-ins have been close to the center of town so not that strange. If the first time was out in West View and the other in Bridgeville, then I’d have to wonder.”
Good point. Those two areas were pretty far apart, one north and the other south of town. Chance encounters weren’t completely unheard of. “You’re right. This is just a weird coincidence.”
“Or there’s some force in the universe that keeps putting us in the same place,” he countered.
The man needed to pick a lane. “For what purpose?”
“You tell me.”
“It’s your theory.”
“But you br
ought it up.”
Now he was just being difficult. “I don’t believe the higher power idea. We’ve had two chance encounters, and I’m sure that after tonight, we’ll never see each other again.”
As he maneuvered the car onto the main strip at the top of Mount Washington, I watched the lights of downtown come into view.
“What if we do?” he asked.
I sensed that he was enjoying this exchange and so was I. More than I had during any moments with my blind dates.
“Then I’m going to assume that you’re stalking me.”
That got a reaction. “I’m stalking you? I’d say it’s the other way around.”
Nonsense. “How do you figure?”
“You ordered the car and then chose me to be your driver. Plus, how do I know you didn’t leave your purse and phone in my car so that you’d have a way to find me again? As for tonight, you came into my place of work, not the other way around.”
Damn it, his argument made sense. “So I’m the one perpetuating these unfortunate encounters?”
He spared me a glance, flashing the dimples that made my brain go fuzzy. “Are they unfortunate?”
They were on a circumstantial level. “If I hadn’t been in the midst of two horrible dates, I wouldn’t have needed rescuing, and you wouldn’t have had to play the hero. So yes, our brief history has been unfortunate for me.”
“Again, you’ve got that backwards. What you should say is fortunately for you I came along at the right time. Twice.”
He hadn’t been this argumentative during our first encounter and I had to admit I liked the challenge. Refusing to back down, I said, “You’re taking too much credit. There would have been another driver and another bouncer.”
“But there wasn’t,” he said, putting the car in park. “Here you go.”
I looked around and realized we were sitting in front of the door to my building. The same door where he’d dropped me two nights ago.
“I’m home.”
“You are.”
For some unknown reason, I didn’t want to get out of the car. “Thank you for the ride,” I said as I dug the cash from my purse. “We really should have stopped at an ATM on the way. There’s one at the convenience store a block over. We could go now.”
“Not necessary.” Jacob took the bills I offered and said, “Keep the quarters.”
There was no reason for me not to get out of the car and the longer I sat there, the weirder things got. For a split second I considered asking if I could see him again. This time, on purpose. But then I remembered that I knew nothing about him. He could have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a wife or dead bodies in his basement.
It was time to go.
“Thank you again,” I said, opening the door and climbing out. “If you come up in my app again, should I reject the ride and wait for the next one?”
“And rob me of another debate?” he replied.
Heart melting, I offered a genuine smile. “That would be a shame.”
“Until next time then,” he said with a nod.
I closed the door and stepped back for him to leave, but the car stayed put and I realized he was once again waiting until I got inside. Whoever Jacob the driver slash bouncer had waiting at home was a lucky individual. Unless they were dead in the basement, of course, but I doubted that was the case. With a last glance over my shoulder, I waved goodbye from the doorway and watched him drive off into the proverbial sunset.
Why couldn’t my friends find me someone like him? They had two more tries but based on the choices so far, I was not holding my breath. By the time I reached the second-floor landing, I’d decided that a conversation needed to happen beforehand if I was going to try this date thing for a third time. And that conversation needed to happen tonight.
Chapter Six
By the time I reached my apartment, I decided to put off the call long enough to eat something. Life had been so crazy lately, I wasn’t even sure what I had in the house. Stepping inside, I heard a noise coming from my kitchen and froze. Milo didn’t make that kind of noise.
Like the first to die in every horror movie ever, I said, “Hello?”
“Hello?” came the response.
Rolling my eyes, I closed the door and dropped my keys in the glass dish on the entry table. “Why are you in my apartment?” I asked, rounding the corner to find Josie holding a bowl of cereal and wearing a guilty look on her face.
“I was out of milk,” she replied. “Why are you home so early?”
“Because my date got us kicked out of the restaurant before we were even seated.” Dropping my purse onto the table, I took the bowl from her hands. “I’ve had nothing but a salad today and I’m starving. Make yourself a new bowl.”
Josie didn’t argue nor did she reach for the cereal.
“Why didn’t you eat more than that?” she asked, following me to the couch. That was not the part of the story I’d expected her to question first.
“Because I had to pick up some of Amanda’s meetings and there wasn’t time.”
I hadn’t seen Josie since Amanda dropped her cancer announcement on me. Would she care that I told my friends? She hadn’t asked me to keep the news to myself, and she didn’t exactly socialize with my friends so there didn’t seem to be much harm in sharing.
“When are you going to tell that demanding woman to hire someone else?” Josie snapped. “Becca, you can’t keep letting her run you to death like this. She should have hired another planner years ago.”
A drop of milk landed on my chin and I used my sleeve to dab it away. She was right, of course, and I’d mentioned increasing the staff to Amanda before. She’d insisted that we could handle things on our own. Even hiring Marquette had taken nearly a year of begging, and he’d only been with us for eighteen months.
“She has cancer,” I said, unfairly dropping the bomb on Josie just as Amanda had dropped it on me.
I swayed as she plopped onto the couch beside me. “She what?”
“Has cancer,” I enunciated. “All I know is that she’s starting an aggressive treatment and needs me to handle her clients for the next couple months. She didn’t even tell me what kind so I have no other information.”
“That’s awful and I hope she’s okay, but this is your busiest time of year. You can’t handle all of that on your own.”
Stating the obvious, I said, “I don’t have a choice.”
“Tell her you can’t.”
I couldn’t do that anymore than I could tell my friends to stop pushing me into these dates. I was literally incapable of saying no to anyone. If Adam hadn’t been such a jerk to Jacob, I’d probably still be suffering through his nauseating company.
“I can’t tell a woman who is potentially dying that she’ll have to find someone else to keep her business running while she goes through chemo.” It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought this through. “I’ve looked at my schedule and I can make it work so long as the clients are flexible with meetings. Every venue has a stellar rep that I’ve worked with before, and I trust them to handle most of the detail work. Marquette has been asking for more responsibility so this is the perfect time to let him have it.”
“I thought Amanda told him no.”
“She did.” A mere wrinkle in my plan. “But if she’s going to be too busy to handle her clients, I’m assuming she won’t be around to know exactly what’s happening in the office either. By the time she comes back, we’ll have documented proof that Marquette is fully capable of taking on his own clients.”
I looked down and realized my cereal had gotten soggy. I hated soggy cereal.
“Here,” Josie said, taking the bowl before I could complain. “You need real food anyway. Tell me about this date while I make you some eggs and toast.”
Eggs and toast sounded much better than cold cereal.
“Did you guys discuss the men you picked for these dates?” I asked as Josie shuffled into the kitchen and Milo strolled out of the bedroom to finally say
hello. “Because if these were picked by committee, I might have to shop around for new friends.”
“Not exactly,” she replied, gathering the items she needed onto the counter. As the frying pan landed on the stove, she added, “We talked a little.”
“Meaning you talked about finding guys who wouldn’t remind me of Brian,” I stated, knowing that’s what she was dancing around.
We’d all been dancing around this subject for two years, and I seemed to be the only person willing to even say his name. My friends pretended Brian never existed. At least they did when I was in the room. I doubted that was the case when I wasn’t.
Josie froze with the carton of eggs halfway to the counter. She looked as if she’d been caught in the middle of a burglary and told not to move.
“Why don’t you guys ever say his name?” I asked. Why I picked this moment to bridge the subject I didn’t know. Maybe I was just too tired to maintain the dance.
Setting the eggs on the counter, Josie stared at my backsplash for several seconds before turning around. “When you see that someone has a painful wound, you don’t stick your finger in it,” she said. “Especially when you care about the person deeply and you wish you could have protected them better.”
I never wanted anyone to feel guilty for my misfortunes. Well, one person, but he’d given himself the ultimate punishment before I could do it for him.
“None of you could have protected me from what happened.”
“No,” she agreed, “but we can protect you now.”
“There’s nothing to protect me from,” I said, kicking off my shoes and slipping out of my jacket. In a full stretch, I added, “Except these dates you guys keep picking. And low-hanging sycamore branches, apparently.”
Taking the cue that I was done talking about the past, Josie went back to making eggs while Milo leaped onto my lap and starting kneading himself a place on my stomach.
“What happened tonight?” Josie asked. “How do you get kicked out of a restaurant?”
“My date got into an altercation with another patron,” I replied. “Donna’s neighbor was not impressed by me at all, and before we were even seated, he started making eyes at a woman in the bar. Her boyfriend took umbrage to this and the two men began insulting and poking each other.”